Phillippe Aumont Dazzles Against Team USA
No matter if you’re Tommy Lasorda or not a fan of the World Baseball Classic, you have to admit it’s nice having competitive baseball around. I was lucky enough to catch the United States of America team play against Team Canada earlier Saturday and much to my pleasure, 20-year-old Phillippe Aumont got involved in the action.
Aumont is a former first round pick by the Seattle Mariners who saw his first exposure to pro ball in 2008. In 55.2 innings for the Wisconsin Timber Rattlers, Aumont posted a 3.58 FIP while striking out more than eight per nine and walking around three per nine. As far as first impressions go, Aumont pretty much nailed it.
He only threw 21 pitches (13 fastballs, 8 slurves) but his average fastball sat near 96 miles per hour with solid movement. I could sit here and write out how impressive Aumont’s stuff looked or how consistent he mixed speeds, but how about I just show you using Pitchfx data?
The strike zone and velocity graphs are pretty self explanatory, so I’ll focus on the movement. You should notice the two clusters of pitches, one in the upper left quadrant and the other in the bottom right quadrant. It’s pretty clear which set of pitches are Aumont’s fastballs and which are his slurves. An exercise I would encourage is looking at the velocity chart and imagining how the USA batters like Kevin Youkilis felt seeing:
First pitch: 95 miles per hour fastball that breaks in.
Second pitch: Power slurve breaking away.
Third pitch: Another slurve.
I’m not a prospects expert, but Aumont looked pretty damn impressive today.
Wow…that’s pretty impressive.
I’m impressed with the Youk stikeout especially, even if ‘Euclis’ isn’t quite at top form yet.
i got a big laugh from roto wires side bar analysis
“Analysis: … Aumont, though, recovered, inducing David Wright to line out before striking out Kevin Youkilis and Curtis Granderson to retire the side. …”
its not every day that a pitcher gets praised for “inducing a line drive”, talk about being a tad optimistic
Well it wasn’t much of a line drive. It was more of a floater.
Yeah, that ‘liner’ was a broken bat bloop.
Watching that inning was crazy. He got himself into trouble, and then it was like he realized “oh hey I’m awesome” and just blew by everyone.
He didn’t even get himself into that much trouble. He gave up a walk and only gave up one real legitimate hard hit ball in play, which was to Jimmy Rollins, and one of those things wouldn’t have happened if the double was caught by an outfielder with any more range than Matt Stairs.
But hey, I’m a biased Mariners fan, so I’m just arguing the semantics : P
It doesn’t matter how it happens, bases loaded with no outs, and then getting out of it unscathed is fanastic.
I dont think the question is his effectiveness so much as his health.
I think he ends up in the pen.
I just logged onto USSM to ask whether there was any pitch fx at yesterdays game. And I find that RJA has already gone ahead and pieced the data together for us at Fangraphs…
Thanks!
I must admit I’m unfamiliar with Pitch fx, but it seems impossible to have movement in the +vertical direction (no rising fastball). Could someone explain exactly how to interpret the data?
+vertical just means it’s coming in higher than a theoretical pitch with no spin, which happens when backspin is present due to Magnus forces.
The pitch fx data shows movement compared to a theoretically spinless ball. So the ball doesn’t actually rise, but is considered rising in comparison to a spinless movement-less ball.
That definition may be slightly off so if anybody wants to look up a true def they can
“”I think he ends up in the pen.””
Where does that come from?
He has very little pro experience and pitched even less beforehand due to a family situation he won’t talk about and the weather in Canada.
So that means it’s impossible for him to ever be a starter? The Canadian weather stunted him so much as a child that he’ll never be able to pitch more than one or two innings in a game even after years of development? He may start out in the pen, sure, because lots of young players do. And there may be reasons to keep him there — not enough plus pitches, no out pitch for opposite-handed batters, endurance problems, injuries. But I don’t see how inexperience, a childhood family situation, or his past long winters of inactivity automatically doom him to a relief role forever.
Y’a t’il quel que chose d’autre?
As much as Flatbrim Santana showed us last year that only two pitches was just fine for a starter, I’m curious, does Aumont have another offering?
I’m sure they’re having him work on a change, but it does not amount to anything as of yet.
He’s very raw though, so it might be a good idea to have him work on only 2 major pitches at first.
How can you get the Pitch F/X data for the WBC? I went here:
http://gd2.mlb.com/components/game/mlb/year_2009/
And found my game:
http://gd2.mlb.com/components/game/mlb/year_2009/month_03/day_08/gid_2009_03_08_usaint_venint_1/
But I can’t find any PFX data to import into Excel. Am I looking in the wrong spot?
Yes. Yes you are.
Would you be so kind as to lead in towards the right direction? Thanks. 🙂
Instead of /mlb, drill down through /int for the WBC international games.
Aren’t those two different fastballs, a 4 and two seamer? And a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, but those slurves move a lot like most guys curves…